I don’t hear it dispatched on the radio often, but when I do, I think it’s usually “GO-thee.”

He did some great work for the Boy Scouts!

My grandpa decided to quit drinking when those unfortunate Bootleggers very publicly got shot down at the Canadian border. (Then in 1933 he said “meh” and started drinking again.)

Especially the poorly educated poors.

Oh hell yeah!!!! The 400 was my #2 theater as a kid (the Adelphi on Clark Street, long gone now, was my #1). I moved to Norwood Park (conveniently close to the Pickwick) over a decade ago, but I’ll definitely take a trip back to the old neighborhood for a show at the 400!

A clear typo here, the result of me typing too fast as well as having Eckersall on the brain. Eckie didn’t field the ball behind the goal line (how could he, if he had also punted it?). Denny Clark fielded it.

Eckie - Nebraska Press Walter “Eckie” Eckersall was one of the most famous people in Chicago for three decades: He was the city’s first high school athlete superstar when the...

www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978... @univnebpress.bsky.social @mattbrowncfb.bsky.social @b1gfootball.bsky.social @robertloerzel.bsky.social @dandalyonsports.bsky.social @pmorse.bsky.social

Eckie repeated as 1st-team All-American, while Mark Catlin made 2nd team & Hugo Bezdek made 3rd team. The Maroons would return to the mountaintop in 1913, with another national title. But 1905 would remain Stagg’s and Eckersall’s shining moment, sealed on this date 120 years ago.

“In common with everybody else from Michigan, I felt murderously inclined toward Eckie that day,” said Lardner, Eckersall’s future Chicago Tribune colleague and close friend. “Not until I got to know him would I admit…that all he had done was play a great and victorious game of football.”

Chicago had beaten Michigan 2-0, a masterpiece far more exciting than its low score would indicate. The Maroons ended the Wolverines’ 56-game unbeaten streak and became undisputed “Champions of the West.” Later selectors retroactively named Chicago the 1905 national champion.

Several minutes still remained but Michigan’s offense stalled. “Try trick plays, damn it; we might as well be licked by forty points!” Tom Hammond shouted at his QB. Three Michigan drives came up empty, and the game ended with the ball in Michigan’s possession at midfield.

Badenoch hit Clark hard, at the 2-yard line. Clark slipped forward; Catlin threw him backward, then fell on Clark behind the goal line. There was no “forward progress” back then; a player was down where he was down – in this case, for a safety, and 2 points for Chicago.

Eckie dropped back to punt; Michigan HB Denny Clark lined up deep to receive. Eckie kicked a beauty, high into the air. Instead of letting the ball go, Eckie fielded it behind the goal line. Then, instead of downing the ball for a touchback, Clark tried to run forward.

Several more punts followed, and Chicago gained a field-position edge. Then, from the 55-yard-line (midfield at the time; football fields were 110 yards long then), Eckersall, lineman Art Badenoch, and end Mark Catlin combined for the Play of the Game in the Game of the Century.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eckie saw Garrels shifting to the right in an effort to block the punt, leaving an ever-so-small gap on the left side. Eckie lined up to punt; the ball was snapped; then Eckie took off and ran around his left end into the gap, for almost 20 yards and a first down.

"on either side, the angle would be such that it would still leave Michigan within scoring distance. It was a hard proposition, but he faced it and did the bold thing…[Eckersall] undoubtedly saved Chicago by his nerve.”

“If he attempted a run, and Michigan stopped him, she was perfectly sure to score. If he punted against the wind, the chances were very strong indeed that if the ball went out onto the field it would be heeled and Michigan would kick a place-kick goal. If he endeavored to kick out of bounds...

In the second half, Michigan used its brawn to gain advantage in field position. One deep Garrels punt, followed by an offside penalty by Chicago, pinned the Maroons at their own 7-yard line. From there, on third down, Eckie faced a dilemma, as Walter Camp would describe:

A woozy Eckersall (CTE had not yet been identified, and in that old-school era of single-platoon football any substitution, even for injury, would disqualify a player for the rest of the half) lay on the ground for several minutes, then eventually got up and headed back to Chicago's huddle.

(Whatever Hammond said, or didn’t say, to Eckersall at the moment, the pair would remain lifelong friends. Tom Hammond’s mother dispelled any rumors of frostiness or hostility a few weeks later, noting that Tom and Walter had spent time together during Christmas break.)

According to one (certainly biased) report from the Michigan camp, Tom Hammond walked over to Eckie as he lay on the ground. “Get up and be a man!” Hammond supposedly bellowed, then followed with: “Well, you and I have been friends a long time, Walter, but we’re through now.”

Eckie and Garrels each punted at least 10 times in the 1st half. One Eckersall punt proved costly for Michigan; after the ball sailed into the air, Michigan’s 230-pound tackle Joe Curtis knocked Eckie to the ground. As Eckie lay motionless, Curtis was ejected for roughing.

Much of the 1st half was a punting duel between Eckie and Michigan end Johnny Garrels, a superb all-around athlete who would medal in the 110 hurdles & shot put at the 1908 London Olympics; if the decathlon had existed (it wouldn’t until 1912), Garrels would’ve been a favorite.

Chicago received the opening kickoff, but only gained 3 yards in 2 downs (back then teams had 3 downs to gain 5 yards, not 4 to gain 10). In punt formation, Eckie fumbled. But on the ensuing 1st down, Michigan fumbled. The first two series set the tone for the game: A stalemate.

The "Father of American Football," Walter Camp, was also there. But Chicago’s founding president and Stagg patron William Rainey Harper, terminally ill with cancer, was not. Too weak to sit up & watch from a room across the street, Harper instead received regular telephone updates from his son.

27,000 fans–a sellout in the rickety wooden stadium–packed the stands of U of C’s old Marshall Field. The crowd included northwest side teenager & future coaching legend Knute Rockne and young sportswriter Ring Lardner, originally from southern Michigan but now toiling at a paper in South Bend, IN.

Another subplot involved the rivalry between friends & Hyde Park H.S. teammates Eckersall and Tom Hammond, now a 3rd year starting FB at Michigan. The pair very nearly ended up as Wolverine teammates; Stagg had snatched Eckie off a train platform in 1903 to keep him home.

Chicago had Eckersall, now a junior and truly at the top of his game on both offense and defense and as a kicker, punter, and kick returner in this, the last season before the forward pass. The game also promised to be a duel for the ages between genius coaches Stagg and Yost.

One thing these Wolverines lacked was two-time 1st-team All-American HB Willie Heston, arguably UM’s greatest player ever, who still holds the school record with 72 TDs. Heston had graduated, and the 1905 Wolverines didn’t have a true star; but they were deep, disciplined, and BIG.

Under coach Fielding Yost, Michigan’s dominance stretched back 5 seasons. In their last game before Yost's hiring, on Thanksgiving Day 1900, the Wolverines lost to Chicago & coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, 15-6. Since then, Michigan had gone 55-0-1, with a 2,821-40 point differential.